Let’s explore three more old camp fire tales and discover the origins of three more urban legends!
Polybius Video Game
In 1981, a new arcade game appeared in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. It was brilliant and addictive, with kids waiting in line for hours for their turn to play.
However, played became blighted by amnesia, hallucinations and seizures – sometimes resulting in the death.
Strangely, men in black suits would appear and collect data from the machine – this data supposedly included responses to psychoactive effects and subliminal messaging. Folks say the company behind the games was named “Sinneslöschen”, which translates to “Sensory deprivation”.
But no more than a months after the game release, all traces of it disappeared, the game’s mysterious origins and its resulting data, lost to time.
Polybius is one of my favourite modern urban legends. I think it’s delightfully fun and with Polybius cabinets have since appeared as easter-eggs in media from The Simpsons to Loki, it’s earned it’s place on the fringes of popular culture.
Unfortunately, the game is generally believed to have never really existed. It first began circulating the internet in the early 2000s, and despite investigations, no reference to a Polybius video game have been found. Sinneslöschen isn’t even a real German word.
Still, it presses the right cultural buttons. The 1980s were rife with fear of and for children’s entertainment. This is a time in America where rock music was from Satan and came off the back of the MKUltra scandal.
Still, there are a few grains of truth within the Polybius legend. The FBI really did crash arcades, suspecting owners of being involved in gambling. This lead to FBI monitoring of machines for evidence of tampering. With so many kids and teens hanging out in one place, arcades became a regular spot for drug dealing and re-selling counterfeit or stolen goods. According to this article, police did once set up a fake arcade with camera hidden in the consoles. Where was this? Portand, Oregon, of course.
There have also been reports of players being taken ill during a hard core gaming session. Even back in the 80s – particularly 1981, where the story is set, there are reports of 12-year-old Brian Mauro playing Asteroids for 28 hours in an attempt to break a record only to fall ill and end his session early thanks to a mix of anxiety and Coke (the drink, not the drug). Where did this happen? Portland, Oregon, once again.
All over the USA, there were reports of video games causing epileptic seizures or other medical issues – particularly in relation to the game Tempest, so it’s no surprise that the legend thrived against – and probably, because of – this very background.
In recent years, developeds have attempted to re-imagine what the Polybius game could have been, so we do in fact have some real-life games to try. Just make sure you take a break every so often.
The Well To Hell
Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Soviet engineers in Siberia drilled a hole 9 mile (14.4km) deep into the earth, only to break through into a sort of cavity.
They lowered sensory equipment into the hole, and measured temperatures of 1,000°C (1832°F). This wasn’t all they found, however.
The team also lowered a heat-resistant microphone into the hole, and to their horror, seemed to record tortured screaming from within the hole.
They’d drilled into Hell.
This tale first appeared in English in 1989, reportedly by a Christian TV network in America. Before this, the story was published by two Christian journals in Finland, one of which claimed the story originally came from a newsletter published by Messianic Jews in California. This is all according to evangelical radio host, Rich Buhler.
There are even several audio clips of these horrific screams.
There was, in fact, a lot of digging done my the Soviet Union at the time, but as far as we know, they’ve never actually burrowed into Hell. The most well known of the screaming audio clip was found to have been collated and looped from the 1972 film, Baron Blood.
In fact, if the Soviet Union really did dig into Hell, we’d probably never hear about it. Besides, if cartoons have taught me anything, it’s that if you dig straight through the earth, you end up in Australia.
Killer In The Back Seat or High Beams
A young woman is driving down the road one dark night, when she realises she’s being followed.
The other driver – a man – keeps flashing his high beams, driving treacherously close and even begins to ram her car.
It’s not until she arrives home – or in some cases, stops her car – that she realises the truth.
An escaped murderer was hiding in her back seat with an axe, and the driver was warning her, using his high beams to scare the murderer and keep him from killing her.
We’ve all heard this one, haven’t we? In some stories, the woman stops at a gas station before, which is where the killer sneaks in. Alternatively, the whole event happens in the aforementioned gas station, where the attendant insists she come inside, as they saw a sinister man sneak into her back seat.
This story has circulated since the 1960s, and has since formed the bases of chain letters, advice columns and campfire stories ever since.
The traditional moral here is actually pretty gross – the woman “misinterprets” a helpful man, at her peril. “NoT aLL mEn,” it seems to say. In some versions, ignoring the first man leads to her own demise at the hands of the second man in her back seat. She’s unable to keep herself safe on her own, and needs to be rescued. Bullshit.
Of course, we should take this story as an example of being aware of your surroundings, because sometimes the assailant is in the back seat, sometimes they’re the other driver.
Thanks to current technology, the woman of the story could now phone the police who would likely meet her and prevent harm from either driver or unknown male in the back seat. That being said, can we even trust the police today?
Anyway, according to snopes.com, there is actually a real incident behind this urban legend. Back in 1964, New York City, an escaped murderer did jump into the backseat of a car. Unfortunately for him, it was the car of an off duty police detective who shot him.
Still, there are lessons to take from this legend. Personally, it’s the very reason I aways lock my car at a petrol station, and always glance in the back seat before I get in.
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